Week in Seven Words #580

This covers the week of 2/28/21 - 3/6/21.

compulsions

We're caught in traps of compulsive behavior – web surfing, phone scrolling, screen watching.

deceptively

What looks like ice on the lake is only the glare of sunlight.

enlarged

The eyes always come out too large in the drawings. Large, placid ellipses.

held

His body shakes with his need to talk, to have someone listen.

liquefy

A land melting into mud and puddles that seem like ponds.

retrospect

Months from now, I sense this worry will seem superficial, a distraction from larger problems.

warmth

A golden retriever finds us as we sit shoulder-to-shoulder on the sunlit bench.

Week in Seven Words #479

bared
It's a bleak, grand landscape of bare earth and massive rocks.

dulled
The bookstore is underwhelming, basically a shrunken Barnes & Noble with a selection watered down to what's most trendy. One of the things I like about bookstores is coming across a book I wouldn't have known about otherwise; that isn't likely to happen here.

intoxicant
A teenaged boy plucks a bud from a magnolia tree. "Is this opium?" he asks his friend. An old lady, walking past them, snorts with laughter. She tells them to come back in a couple of weeks, when the beautiful opium will be in bloom. ("But is it really opium?" he asks. She shakes her head and explains that no, it really isn't.)

sunshine
They've turned a part of the park into a meadow with mulch paths. The long grass is soaked in sunshine.

surface
Around the rock clusters, the stream looks like a ripply diamond-paned window.

trifle
A blister is ballooning on my pinky toe, but I don't mind so much, because it's good to be hiking.

uses
She complains how he's glommed onto her, and how he won't stop talking, but she has no problem using him to carry her coat, camera, or backpack as the need arises.

Week in Seven Words #450

duel
The knights face each other on a sunny field, their armored shoulders white in the sunshine.

inanimate
Beside a brick apartment building, porcelain children sit on swings attached to the lower branches of a tree. Lifelike butterflies climb the old boards of a fence.

mode
"I screamed like a girl," he says, when describing a scary moment in the play. "No," she replies, "you screamed like a boy, since you're a boy."

realizing
I describe something as I wish it had been and not as it was, and I'm hit with a pang of painful empathy; I understand her better.

rested
The hike leader admits that whenever he says, "This is a good spot for a photo," what he means is, "I need to rest." At one point during the hike, he informs us that there are some interesting glacial potholes we could look at if we detour down another path. But wouldn't we rather head for the bathrooms? Most people vote for the bathrooms.

splish
Water spouts from the mouth of the stone frog. It runs through stone channels and emerges from the ground in thin white claws. One boy keeps filling up a cup to splash his younger sisters in a game of water tag. They run laughing through drops of glistening water.

terrain
The bottom of the creek is made up of tiny hills and plateaus of mud. What's left of the water has settled in the valleys.

Week in Seven Words #426

blueness
Beyond the whirring tools and the dentist's graceful hands, an episode of Blue Planet plays on a small screen. I have no idea what's going on, aside from seeing great quantities of fish, but the general blueness is relaxing.

brightness
Sometimes a brilliant moment is made of sunlight falling on the white planks of a house and on the spruce that has sprung up beside it.

directing
The toddler stumble-walks with his finger out pointing.

inspiring
Art can be an antidote to oversimplification, smooth and quick explanations, cowardice, and brutality.

mawkish
She tries to entice me to watch the movie by showing me a YouTube clip, but all I see is syrup and little substance and actors who talk as if the dialogue is sticking to their teeth.

oof
The dog gets so excited that her owner has come home that she launches herself at my stomach from several feet away.

roofing
A writing assignment of many words that makes me realize just how important it is to have the right roof over one's head.

Week in Seven Words #400

accompanied
A homeless man with a CD player hooked to his belt searches for bottles while accompanied by Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli singing "Time to Say Goodbye."

limits
The talk focuses on the complications of forgiveness. How does one (or can one) forgive repeat offenses? What if the offender shows no sign of remorse or is unwilling or unable to change? What if the offense is too serious? It's a heavy discussion, and many of the people present either remain silent or speak in short, clipped phrases, as if there's so much more they'd like to say but too little time.

morula
At the birthday party in the park, small pink balloons are tied together in a cluster that brings to mind a diagram of the stages between zygote and embryo, a ball of cells rapidly multiplying.

pointlessly
His words trigger my temper, and I regret letting my anger show. It feels like defeat, to lose control even briefly. It's also pointless. The provocation in and of itself is superficial. The anger has deeper roots and is bound up in problems I wouldn't be able to discuss with him. We're on the level of surface irritations.

student
An old woman is in the middle of a calisthenics routine by the river. A toddler approaches and begins to imitate her: jumping, stretching, squatting, hopping on and off a stair. (In this last one, the toddler crawls on and off rather than trust her legs too much.)

sunnily
The water is tinted gold in the late afternoon. I look up from my book as a dog trots by wearing aviator shades.

suspend
There's a man who sits in the lobby of the synagogue or sometimes on the front steps, like he doesn't want to get too close to the praying but doesn't want to abandon it either.

Week in Seven Words #398

breathtaking
There's a beach by a quarry, and it's one of the best places I've been to, beautiful and invigorating. It's made up of slabs of rock strewn along the shore. Just picking one to sit on is a pleasure. I rest for a while with the sun on my shoulders. I could have spent days there.

kayaker
A river wends through red, green, and gold grass. A kayak emerges from under a bridge, and sunlight shimmers in its wake.

seaside
Walking to the farthest reach of the jetty, I have a feeling of being embraced by blue. The sky, with some blue-white smears of cloud, the harbor spreading out on all sides, and the water trickling through the clumsy string of rocks - blue all around.

secretive
It's an old house, with enormous trees fussing around it and petting it with their branches, and shrubs rearing up to screen it protectively. It keeps silent about the people who lived there and what they saw from its windows. What we have are some facts embellished by imagination.

sweeten
It's a town of fudge and ice cream and pastels, flowers in window boxes and clapboard churches overlooking the ocean.

visage
In an art museum, I like the portraits best. They're characters expressing stories.

wondrous
The sound of a blue whale's heartbeat.

Week in Seven Words #340

askew
Playing basketball while wearing glasses.

colorant
In a sunset after a thunderstorm, the clouds have a tangerine underbelly.

creamy
His dessert is a cookie drowning in half-melted ice cream. It doesn't matter that he won't finish it. Part of the pleasure comes from chasing chunks of cookie around with his fork in the sweet puddle.

forewarned
Someone who checked out the book before me penciled a warning over one of the short stories: "If after 5 pages you think this is going to change it isn't. It's like swimming in molasses and takes more from you than it gives back."

glimmer
To find the speech moving, I have to forget most of what I know about the speaker. I just take in the cadence and listen to the phrases promising hope and progress. For a short while, I can believe the speech is real. The world doesn't yet intrude on its promises.

ignited
When we step outside, there's a mix of rain and blinding sunlight. The sun has set fire to the rain.

teatime
She lays out a tea service for a woman with white woolly hair and a girl with blue ribbons in her braids.

Week in Seven Words #266

diligence
She shows me how she's patiently worked her way towards a difficult yoga pose, adjusting her legs in increments over weeks. Now she sits with serenity, as if the arrangement of her lower body doesn't register in her conscious mind.

employed
Her job duties include ignoring the phone and investigating vacation spots on Google Maps.

hushed
The sun turns to ashes behind an aluminum fence.

mildly
A mug of tea warming my hands. A conversation that passes with no bitter words.

pulse
The dog, calming on my lap, is a pounding heartbeat wrapped in hair.

stale
The store smells of sawdust and wheaty things. Breathy acoustic versions of pop songs make background noise.

venipuncture
She sinks the needle into one arm, then the other. Gives me a bewildered look, as if to ask, "Are you human?" and leaves to search for a second phlebotomist: the one I call "The Vein Whisperer," who trails her fingers along my forearms, taps the skin, holds the needle poised above the surfacing vessel.

Week in Seven Words #262

bedazzle
The sun's out, and the sand looks like snow, white and glittering.

commitment
She gives me her trust like she would her child. I cradle it with awkward care, feeling its quiet hammering pulse and knowing I must never lose hold of it.

deceptive
On the playground, she encounters children who lie charmingly and convincingly, who are friendly one day and insulting the next. She doesn't know what to make of them; they confuse her. Beyond what they do, it's the why - the why is at the heart of the bewildered hurt.

greased
Sleek men attend to their ale and steak.

raring
The dog, at the end of her leash, recognizes my scent, whines, leaps and strains to get close, to be petted and present her belly for a rub.

sundering
Between me and him - a window pane, the twisted branches of a tree.

wrestlers
In their academic gowns, they circle the stage and size each other up, as if their battle of wits will be a physical brawl.

Hudson River Sunset

From a walk a few weeks ago, several miles along the Hudson River on the west side of Manhattan.

Week in Seven Words #248

conniption
The wind, fierce and fretful, throws a tantrum among the trees.

expose
The trail overlooks people's backyards. What do they think about the strange hikers who can peer into their windows at any time of day?

glinting
There is sweat on her upper lip, and her smile is blinding. She would prefer if you look at her smile and not at her eyes.

gold-leaf
Leaves and loose rock underfoot. Gold spreading gloriously overhead.

osseous
All that's left of a home: two stone walls, roof tiles littering the ground, a chimney decaying like a tooth.

splashed
The river throws the sunlight off its back and into our eyes.

thoroughfare
Learning the contours of a river from a train, a forest ridge, and two bridges.

Week in Seven Words #238

bordered
The conversation is largely a repetition of other ones we've had. Because his point isn't to tell me something new; it's to map out the current limits of his life, at least how he sees it. He can do this, but not that. Go there, but no farther, not for now. His words make the boundaries firmer.

bowl
Sand pounded flat by feet but not by waves. It's a sheltered harbor. The water is flat and calm and waits for people to disturb it.

featureless
The sun's glare turns everyone into silhouettes.

mistrustful
A preschooler balances on a fence with his father's help. He tests his father by tipping forward suddenly; will the large hands around his waist tighten and hold him steady? They do. He tells his father, "You'll drop me!" He insists on it, against all conflicting evidence; his father will drop him - it's just a matter of time.

numbing
The idea of time healing wounds - not sure about it. At least, it's not as simple as that. Because time can bring with it numbing, which isn't necessarily the same as healing.

thrust
Roots that have punched through rock and cement.

tinny
I wonder if I'm little more than a nerdy sideshow in his life. And in her life, a project that went haywire, much to her chagrin and bitter delight.

Week in Seven Words #190

alias
He introduces himself by one name and gives me a business card with a different one. "They're both my names, in a way," he says without further explanation.

brisk
Windswept park benches are my new favorite place to read.

commiserating
It feels good to talk to someone who understands family dysfunctions and can laugh about them mirthlessly with you.

mannerless
They press against the tables and gouge the food platters.

punctured
She's a shrewdly cute old woman, but it's easy to imagine her fifty years younger, lording it over her children, deflating them.

relics
Her apartment contains antiques, stained glass, and undisturbed shadows.

sanguineness
We drag our chairs out into the sunlight and talk about how to be inspired.

Week in Seven Words #161 - Grand Cayman edition

botanic
Sore with sunburn, we seek the shade of the color garden with its wall of trees and shrubs, its tiny darting lizards and tropical flowers.

cock-a-doodle-doo
The free parking lot in Georgetown, by the harbor, is a grassy lot where roosters strut around, pecking at the dirt, dodging the occasional car, and crowing their hearts out.

cocktails
At the poolside, everyone is pleasantly soused.

cruising
The public bus is a van, but there's room for everyone who wants to get on. There are some bus stops along the route, but the driver will stop anywhere if you flag him down. He listens to the same rapid, unending, unchanging music that plays everywhere else on the island and that sounds better when you've had a drink. When people pay him, he keeps the cash clutched in his fist, even as he drives.

cyclurids
After trundling along for some time with its head bobbing aggressively, the large blue iguana settles right in the middle of the path, in a patch of shadow cast by an overhanging tree. It stares at us dispassionately, not realizing that it's blocking our way. We could step over it, or maybe try to slip around it. Blue iguanas are herbivores, and they rarely bite people. But why take a chance? So after several minutes spent staring at it as it stares at us, we turn around and head back. Humans, with all the force of our intelligence, foiled by a lizard seeking a little shade.

immersed
For the first time in years, I swim in the ocean. The water feels like silk. When I look down at my hands, they're green and white. Waves spill over my back.

respire
The labored breaths of sea turtles coming up for air.

Week in Seven Words #119

asynchronous
More sunlight is what I need. So I go for a walk. Turns out the weather is cloudy and cool, but at least it doesn't rain, and I enjoy being outdoors. As soon as I get home, the sun comes out.

crisp
Papery green leaves layer the trees outside my building. I want to pluck a leaf off its branch and write on it. If I knew origami I'd fold it into a turtle or set it on the wind as a swan.

emanate
In her sleep she sings, proving that music will always find a way to be heard.

exacting
We may be at different stages in life, but here's one way we're alike - we're too hard on ourselves. She's been told she's strong, but she says she doesn't feel strong inside. I tell her that her actions are what count. In spite of any fear or misgivings she's always done her best; she has behaved with courage and dignity and love. It's unrealistic to never feel fear, to always feel strong, especially for someone in her circumstances.

inedible
The store is closing for the summer, and the only things left on the shelves are food products depicted on their labels as starchy yellow lumps with unappetizing names.

infarct
The elevator sounds like it's suffering a heart attack. Will it hold out long enough to get us to the right floor?

nerds
A comment about someone's Facebook photo turns into a discussion of the Battle of Gettysburg and then the Civil War more generally. I'm among my people.

Week in Seven Words #112

dramatic
A small group of tourists stands at the curbside and shouts at a squirrel to get off the road. "Watch out! Cars are coming!" It reminds me of people who yell at the screen during a horror movie ("Run, run! No, not upstairs!"). At last the squirrel does turn around and head back onto the grass instead of trying to cross the street. The tourists cheer. I don't know how much credit they give themselves for the squirrel's self-preserving choice.

grating
Sitting on a sunlit patio while waiting for the bus, I hear an eardrum-busting excuse for music coming from a loud speaker by a restaurant. It sounds as if someone had roared and slobbered into a microphone and recorded it for posterity.

grinding
The subway scrapes along the tracks, setting people's teeth on edge.

inked
Digital fingerprinting doesn't work for me for the most part, so I have to get it done the old inky way, as part of a background check for a potential job. When I'm done I'm tempted to finger paint on the yellow-gray walls.

kinetosis
When the bus is out on the freeway I can read. But when it hits traffic or starts to lurch through the city I have to close my eyes to stave off motion sickness.

radiate
As she talks about her troubles over the phone I stare at a patch of sunlight by the lake. I want to bring us both into that light, so we can stand together in it and be warm.

stealthy
As the geese sun themselves obliviously on the rock, the ducks sneak past them and go for the breadcrumbs.

Week in Seven Words #77

exhaust
Each car streams the heat from its exhaust pipe across my shins.

frangible
Time crumbles away in sweat, sleeplessness, and apathy.

heatwave
The air presses down like an iron, smoothing my clothes flat onto my skin.

kinetic
She makes her day sound exciting, each detail a delight, and something new to learn at every ordinary place she visits.

leadlight
The leaves look like pieces of green stained glass. It's reassuring to see that even when the heat is brutal and they're scorched, they can still endure beautifully.

nitpicky
He argues into his cell phone, loudly and unselfconsciously, about the precise number of tissues he used the night before to blow his nose.

pillbug
There's a little cell inside me, accessed by a hatch, and sometimes I disappear into it, curling up like a pillbug.

Week in Seven Words #75

ataraxy
We find a rose garden and a magnolia garden facing each other across a quiet street. Both are past their season. Both are mostly empty. A breeze shimmers through them.

coda
Fireworks rumbling at the day's end.

disclosure
I share as much of the truth as I can bring myself to without distressing them unduly.

loll
It's a happy lazy day, when the sun pounds through my head; I play Scrabble, fight off sleepiness, and read out loud from a chapter book about a pig in search of hot buttered toast.

municipal
They take me on a tour through their slowly growing Lego town. In the pizza parlor a Lego lady is firing up some pies.

sheen
Chocolates wrapped in slick foil of different colors: orange, ocean blue, silver, gold, and fir green.

trammeled
We glimpse The Thinker through a sprawl of planks and chain-link fencing. He's hemmed in.

Week in Seven Words #70

abounding
The wind skims water off the fountain. The droplets prickle on our skin. I'm happy to be with family on this fine sunny day.

cherished
He tries to detach my arm from my body; as I play along, falling over in the booth, he laughs. Later on as he sits on his father's shoulders, he leans over for a kiss on the cheek and tells me he loves me.

exploration
We make a water wheel turn, manipulate mirrors, watch a black hole emerge from a supernova. Dinosaurs lean towards us for a closer look as we peer at them through 3D specs. We clamber inside a giant heart, climb to the top of a lighthouse, and escape from a bottomless gift shop.

lamina
In the early morning the trees on my block toss their leaf-shadow onto the brick walls.

mélange
At the miniature golf course in Franklin Square the kids are innovating with the sport. They swing their putters at the ball (golf), kick the ball around (soccer), and dunk the ball into the hole (basketball). When basketsoccergolf fails to divert, there's enough water around to plonk the balls into (scuba diving). The golf course also gives them a mini-tour of Philadelphia; major landmarks appear in small scale. At one hole you have to hit the ball through the crack in the Liberty Bell. At another you have to whack it up a steep hill and into one of three possible tunnels in the Art Museum. The kids like dropping the balls into tunnels and seeing where they'll next emerge.

sunscreen
The soothing redolence of sunscreen - I think of sunshine, water, long walks, powder blue skies.

unbuttoned
He knows I don't like to talk about my problems. That's why, after my initial denials, he keeps asking questions - not intrusively, but just enough to let me understand that he cares and wants to know enough to offer advice. I start to sketch things out for him - a little bit in the cab ride, a lot more on the walk home along the streets baking and the bridge flashing in the sun. Nothing's solved yet, but I do feel a little better by the end of our conversation.

Many moons and wonders

Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

But these photos show us things that can't be seen with the unaided eye. Like Titan and Rhea, two moons of Saturn:





Click on the photo to see more amazing images from space. If unlike Whitman you'd like to know what each one is there's an explanation on every page.

Earth feels precious and improbable to me, after I look at these.